Analyzing Your Presence on Social Networks

In addition to mobile computing revolution, we are right in the middle of social networking revolution. Unless you are in a very specific and unusual line of business, chances are that your clients have accounts on either Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or on all three.

Facebook has by far the largest number of users – currently about 1.23 billion (and growing). 945 million of those say that they access the world’s largest social network through their mobile devices. 15.8% of all “internet-minutes” are spent on Facebook. The “Like” and “Share” buttons are viewed more than 22 billion times a day, not only on the network itself but across millions of websites worldwide.

Google Plus is the runner-up, boasting 550 million active monthly users. The third-largest is LinkedIn – with 280 million active users. However, this one – unlike the first two – is a sort of a ‘niche’ network. It rose to fame as a social network for people in professional occupations, connecting businesses with potential partners and employees, but it also provides a hub for professional networking in many industries. And therefore appeals to an older, well-educated and professionally established audience.

All other networks – Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Yelp, Foursquare, and others are even more ‘niche players’ that cater to specific industries. As this guide covers issues common to practically all companies, I will not discuss these networks. 

Which one should you choose for your corporate presence? It depends squarely on where your target audience ‘lives’. To find it out, you absolutely must invest in a thorough market research – there is no substitute for that. Quite possibly, you might have to be present on all three.

All three networks offer essentially the same functionality – you can create a page for your company, brand or product or a special-interest group (called communities in Google+). Therefore, in this section I will refer to a ‘social network’ which will mean any of these three.

Managing your presence in social networks is similar to managing your corporate Web site. However, there is a very important difference – social networking is substantially more interactive. Which means several things.

First, you have to generate new content much more frequently. Second, your posts must be much shorter than even regular blog posts (let alone articles on your Web site). Something in-between regular blog post size and your tweet.

Third, on a social network you are expected to actually dialog with your visitors (blog posts and especially content on your Web site is closer to your monologue). Which means that your social network page manager must be a good (ideally, a very good) online conversationalist. And, finally, you have groups that present an additional communications opportunity – and an additional challenge.

That said, your more specific objective is to build an optimal portfolio of communication tools – pages (for company, brands and products) and groups that will create the maximum amount of financial value for your shareholders. And when we are talking about a portfolio, we are talking about maximizing the synergy between its components. This portfolio will constitute your presence on the social networks.

Like your Web site and your mobile apps, your presence on social networks has but one fundamental objective – to make money for your company. In other words, to create financial value for your shareholders by building in your potential clients an ‘itch’ – an irresistible desire to spend money on your products and services.

Consequently, the two key components of description and analysis of your presence in social networks are (1) its financial valuation model and (2) the corporate process of generating financial value with your Web site. Obviously, this description must be comprehensive, well-structured, accurate and up-to-date. And require services of a highly competent financial analyst. 

In other words, you must treat your social networks presence design/development (or redesign) project as an investment project. With all usual KPI – free cash flows, payback period, NPV, IRR/MIRR, WACC and economic profit.   

All other KPI for your social networks presence (SNP) are only as valuable as they help you understand, design and optimize financial value generation process and maximize financial value created by your SNP for your shareholders.

Hence, when creating, developing and redesigning your SNP, you must first and foremost think of ‘dollar signs’. Or euro. Or yen. Or Swiss franc. Or whatever currency is appropriate for your business endeavor.

Which means that the key (and absolutely vital) requirement for you SNP is that it must motivate your customers to maximize their purchases of your products and services. Motivate with both appearance and content of your SNP; both irresistible logic and equally irresistible emotional impact.

But first you must make sure that your clients visit your pages and groups on a regular basis. Because you can influence your client with your SNP only if he or she is looking at it. And – as the great Dale Carnegie teaches us - the only way to make your client come to your page or group, look at your site and stay on your site is to make him or her want to do that.

How to make it him or her want it? By offering valuable content – information, entertainment or infotainment – and opportunities for interesting, valuable conversation. Valuable in terms of education – learning something new – and emotional value (enjoying the process).

This content must be written and structured (and do not forget the style!) and the conversation steered in such a way that will create the ‘itch’ to either buy your products and services outright (it is perfectly OK to sell your products and services with your SNP) or at least to learn more about them by visiting the corresponding sections of your social network page or your Web site. Which will create the ‘itch’ to spend money on your products and services that will lead to actual purchase.

Ideally, you would want your content to go viral.  The latter in this context means that it will become very popular among your potential clients by circulating quickly from person to person via blog posts, posts in social networks, twitting, etc.

However, you must make sure that this ‘epidemic’ makes your company very popular and creates an avalanche in visits to your Web site, SNP and/or in downloading and usage of your mobile apps. Which will do the job of actual selling.

In order to make sure that both content and conversations are, indeed, valuable to your visitors, you must know for a fact that they do satisfy their financial, functional and/or emotional needs and desires. Which means that you need to know these needs and desires very well.

Obviously, to satisfy these needs and maximize your overall (emotional and logical) impact on your client, you must ensure that your SNP is well-structured (in terms of both structure proper and its content), logical and exhibits the best possible usability (the latter is mostly taken care of by the corresponding social network). Which, in turn, requires a perfect match with behavioral patterns (perceptions, thinking, decisions and actions) of your visitors.

To visit your page or group, your client must first find it. And not just find it, but develop an irresistible desire (‘itch’) to visit. There are essentially two ways for you to make it happen. The first one – pretty straightforward – is to embed into each of your communication campaign a message (textual and/or visual) that will create this ‘itch’.

The second way is a lot more complicated. You would want your client to find and visit your Web site when he or she is looking for something else – product, service or information. To make it happen, you will need to use tools and techniques commonly known as search engine optimization (SEO). Which can be either paid (a form of advertising that you must analyze like any other communication campaign) or unpaid (‘organic’).

You can use SEO for your content on every social network; however, Google+ is especially big on this thing. No wonder – after all, Google specializes in Web search. You can find more information about using SEO here.

Every potential client has a choice – which page to visit and which group to join. In order for him or her to choose your page or group, it must be competitive – overall and relative to each individual competitor. Competitive overall and in every component – structure, content, style, and conversations. 

To accomplish all abovementioned objectives, you will need a highly competent SNP design and development team (almost always outsourced), SNP manager (in-house; this is a very important position on a corporate communication team in a corporate marketing department) plus possibly relationships managers – professionals that are involved in conversations with visitors of your pages and members of your groups.

As for the ‘quality-of-fit’, your SNP obviously must match your KEF (especially technological and social/cultural), your DCI, your corporate mission statement (if you have one), your corporate vision statement, your marketing and information management strategy, your UVP, your corporate culture and code of conduct and your Web site and mobile apps.

To maximize its impact on its visitors (and therefore financial value generated), your SNP must be highly adaptable to changes in your corporate environment and in behavioral patterns of your stakeholders. And sometimes you must change your SNP simply to prevent it from becoming boring.

To make your SNP adaptable enough, you must design and implement a highly efficient corporate process of monitoring your corporate environment and making the appropriate changes to your SNP structure, content and style.